


Ladies' Night In

by perilouspage



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Gen, pizza manicures and rom coms are the best self care, rita is a good friend and juno obliges her, self-care, the entire tpp fandom: PLEASE LET JUNO REST, the soft happy juno we need
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 23:32:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13351809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perilouspage/pseuds/perilouspage
Summary: In which Rita forces Juno to practice some self-care, because every lady deserves to be pampered every once in a while.





	Ladies' Night In

There were two things Juno Steel had learned about Rita in the years he’d known her.

The first was that she was more perceptive than people gave her credit for. She had to be, for all the secretarial work she did for Juno, but it went beyond that. She’d been different with him, since his eye, and especially since O'Flaherty. It was in the way that she’d thrown him a birthday party, one exactly his speed, with a movie and popcorn and an early night in after a long, stressful week. It was in the way she’d started greeting him in the morning, a one-armed hug and sideways glance from her desk chair like she was evaluating what kind of mood she should expect that day. Part of Juno was starting to feel babied over it. He was forty years old, for God’s sake. He didn’t need Rita to dote after him just because she’d started picking up on one of his typical, self-deprecating moods.

The second was that, when Rita set her mind to something, there was absolutely no shaking her.

“But Boss!” she was currently crying after him. “I just got this whole new spa set, and it’s  _ super  _ nice, I can’t just let it gather dust in my closet!”

Juno didn’t break his stride, pulling his coat off the rack and over his shoulders in one, smooth movement. “Then don’t, Rita.”

“I can’t use it by myself!” she volleyed. She was standing behind her desk, narrowly avoiding haphazard stacks of paper as she gesticulated. “A spa night by yourself is one’a the saddest sounding things I ever heard!”

“Comm one of your other friends, then,” Juno said. “Rita, listen. It’s been a long day, I still have to work on the Nguyen case, and--”

“No!” she yelled over him. “Mista Steel, subtle ain’t working on you right now, so I’m giving it to you straight. Come over my place for ladies’-night-in tonight, or I’m not doing any paperwork for a  _ week _ !”

With his back to her, Juno huffed a disgruntled sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. He couldn’t afford to have her at odds with him, not while the Nguyen case was still giving him trouble. It couldn’t be good to let her get away with threatening work in exchange for things she wanted, but at this point, he needed her too badly, and she knew it.

Then, like a shark that sensed it’d drawn blood, Rita added, “And I’ll buy you a pizza from your favorite place on Carroway Street!”

Slowly, Juno turned around. “What… what time should I be there?”

 

* * *

 

The instructions that Rita had given him were almost enough make him back out of the deal. She’d told him to come in his most comfortable clothes, to remove his makeup, and to leave his apartment with absolutely nothing pertaining to work (“And, yes,” she’d interrupted his question, “that includes your gun.”).  His gut was telling him it was a recipe for disaster, ten kinds of too-vulnerable to be in Hyperion City on a Friday night. But he still found himself returning home, taking a full shower for the first time in… an embarrassingly long time, and changing into a holey pair of sweats he had to dig from the back of his closet. Maybe he owed this to Rita, he decided, after all the moping and sharp attitude he’d subjected her to. His own happiness would make her life easier… and he couldn’t argue with that.

He walked only the best-lit streets on his way to Rita’s apartment on Lakeview. He couldn’t stop himself from peering into every tinted car window that passed him, side-eyeing pedestrians, and jumping at shadows; he’d left his trenchcoat and pistol at home, but the paranoid attitude was about as hardwired as his cybernetic eye at this point. It didn’t stop him from buzzing into the building at seven o’clock on the dot, just like Rita had told him to, so he doubted she would mind.

Rita answered the door in fuzzy pink pajamas, her bottle-blonde hair already up in curlers. Juno nearly about-faced at the sight, but then she was shouting, “Mista Steel! I can’t believe you actually came!” and dragging him in by the sleeve of his sweatshirt, and the slam of the door behind him signaled the point of no return.

“Pizza just showed up,” she said as she steered him to the couch and pushed him onto it. “It’s half-cheese and half-pepperoni, what kind do you want?”

“Uh,” he said, head spinning with the smell of hair product that followed Rita like a cloud. “A slice of each, actually?”

“Comin’ right up!” she chirped, and bustled around the half-wall that seperated her kitchen from her living room.

He cajoled after her, “What, no wine?”

“I might not be the brightest bulb in the drawer, Boss, but I know you probably shouldn’t get drunk anytime soon.”

Fair enough.

While she was still out of the room, Juno took a moment to check out the room. Her TV was playing some documentary on Earth animals with the volume down low. Her coffee table was a veritable cornucopia of beauty products; a pink caddy had bottles of lotion and scrubs, and a purple one had bottles of nail polish. A sparkly-silver zip bag was spilling out its contents, foundations, blushes, mascaras and lipsticks rolling every which way. The box that Juno assumed had held Rita’s curlers now sat empty next to a bottle of hairspray and three different kinds of brushes.

Rita stepped into his field of vision, holding two paper plates that were threatening to dump  several slices of greasy pizza right onto her shag area rug. “One for you,” she said, depositing a plate into his lap, “and one for me.”

Juno wasted no time in scooping up one of the slices, folding it in half, and shoveling it into his mouth. He hadn’t been much for food the past few weeks, but Rita knew how deeply his love affair with the pizza place on Carroway ran. The pizza was greasy and heavy, sauce leaving the perfect tinny-tomato zing behind. He didn’t look up from the plate as Rita sat down beside him, and didn’t bother swallowing before he spoke. “So,” he said around a half-chewed mouthful, “where’s that new spa kit?”

Rita hummed guiltily beside him. “Okay, so maybe I didn’t get a new spa set,” she said. “It was a teensy little lie. But I needed an excuse to get you over here, Mista Steel, and I’ve got all the stuff anyway.”

Rita’s logic never failed to make Juno wonder how she saw the world. It must have been a loud, fabulous, stupidly happy place to her. But he couldn’t help but smile at the guilt in her voice, over the most innocuous lie he’d heard in ages. “Okay,” he said, “then what are you planning for me?”

Rita sparked to life beside him, leaning in so fast he had to scramble to keep his plate from flipping. “Well! I’ve got all the stuff for manicures, since I know you haven’t had one in forever. And I’ve got this really nice face mask that’s supposed to help with dark under-eye circles, it’s what gave me the idea for a spa night in the first place!”

“Gee,” Juno said dryly, “I’m so glad you saw a product for eye bags and immediately thought of me.”

“Well, you know me,” Rita said, oblivious. “Always there to help!” Then, with speed enough to give him whiplash, “Oh! I downloaded a whole bunch of movies for tonight! Here’s the remote, so take your pick!”

He backed out of the documentary to a list of obviously-pirated titles. “Rita, this is illegal,” he muttered, but thumbed his way through them nonetheless. “And most of these are romantic comedies.”

“First of all, romantic comedies are practically required for ladies’ nights, Boss. Second of all, don’t try to pretend you don’t love  _ A Night on Phobos _ as much as I do.”

He grunted at her, somewhere between agreement and amusement. He finally settled on a title he didn’t recognize on a whim, making Rita squeal happily beside him. “Oh, Boss,” she began to gush, “that one’s soooo good! So the protagonist is this dame named Antonia, and she’s working at a fancy coffee shop! But then, a rival coffee shop opens up across the street, and she falls in love with the owner! But then--!”

Juno started to zone both her and the opening credits of the movie out, in favor of finishing his pizza and wiping the grease on his thighs. He swapped the plate for the purple caddy of nail polish, and began to prod his way through it. One side was full of gel colors, and the other had files, cuticle pushers, cotton balls, acetone polish remover, and a myriad of gadgets that he didn’t even recognize. He only got as far as choosing a file before Rita snatched both it and the caddy out of his lap.

“Ooooh no, Mista Steel, I’ll be taking care of that.” She slammed the caddy onto the table in front of her like she was trying to prove her authority. “Put the mask on first, then I’ll do the manicure while it sits.”

“Jeez, pushy,” Juno muttered. He had to move several bottles around before he found the foil packet that contained his “mask”. If the picture on the front of the package was accurate, the thing was in two small, apostrophe-shaped pieces, which he guessed were to go under each eye. The verbiage on the package said things like “cucumber”, “coconut”, “brightening” and “hydrating”. He glanced up to Rita, who’s curlers were bouncing as she nodded at him, before he sighed and tore the package open. Sure enough, the two pads sat inside, looking like fat, green caterpillars ready to pupate.

He felt like an alien, plucking one curved pad out of the bag with his index finger and thumb. It was liquid inside with a thin, waxy outer layer. He chanced another unsure glance at Rita, who was now miming sticking something under her eyes and massaging in little circles. He mimicked her, pressing one pad gently beneath his organic eye. It didn’t stick at first, and so he began to push it into place. The pressure seemed to pop some kind of seal, and he felt something thick and cool begin to seep onto his skin.

He yelped, yanking his hand back, but the pad stayed adhered to his face. Judging by Rita’s unchanged pantomiming and patient smile, that was supposed to happen. With a deep breath and a wonder as to why he’d agreed to this, he continued with the other eye.

“I must look like a moron,” he said beneath his breath.

“Casa di Rita is a judgement-free zone,” Rita replied. “Now, give me your hands, please.”

He turned to face Rita, crossing his legs to make room to settle his hands. “Shouldn’t we put down a towel or something?”

“I ain’t spilled a drop of nail polish since the eighth grade!” Rita said. She seemed to deliberate over her caddy, before pulling the same file Juno had picked out with a flourish. She lifted one of his hands in her own, brought it to her face, and frowned. “Mista Steel, you’ve been biting these down.”

“Yeah,” he replied. “It’s just that my own dirty fingernails are so delicious.”

She shot him a brief, dirty look. “Alright, smart aleck,” she said, “I’ll fix ‘em up nice and pretty for you anyway.”

Something about the way she said it,  _ fix ‘em up nice and pretty _ , soothed Juno. It was stupid, he told himself, but… he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten pampered like this. It was, however badly he didn’t want to admit it, a very nice feeling. 

And so he said nothing as Rita went to work, buffing his nails and pushing his cuticles into some semblance of order. He was just starting to pay attention to the movie, in which Antonia had embarrassed herself by dropping a tray of drinks in front of her love interest, when he heard the sound of a bottle opening and Rita saying, “You like peppermint, right, Boss?”

He didn’t get a chance to respond before she was squirting a generous amount of peppermint lotion into his palm. Then, she began rubbing it in, massaging it into his skin and kneading her thumbs into the meat of his hand. It was nothing short of heavenly. He could feel his whole shoulder relax as Rita worked her way up his wrist, nearly to his elbow, and back down. She didn’t even need to ask him to switch hands; he practically jabbed her in the face with how quickly he offered it up.

The combined sensations of the cooling mask, the tingling lotion, and Rita’s massage had Juno’s head lolling on his shoulders by the time Rita was preparing his nails for paint. “What’re we thinking for color here? Something snazzy? Ooh, maybe like a hot pink?”

He imagined his fingers tipped in hot pink paint, a color that screamed flamboyant, decadent,  _ pretty.  _ He imagined himself holding his gun, pink-tipped fingers gripping the trigger, Rita’s favorite color a testament to having her support out on the field.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Pink’s good."

* * *

 

By the time Rita was done with him, they’d gone through two movies, and Juno’s fingernails and toenails had been painted a bold pink. She’d massaged his hands, arms, feet and calves with that tingly peppermint lotion, and even helped remove his eye masks. He felt like putty, his sweats still rolled up and his feet still in Rita’s lap. His stomach was so full of pizza, he doubted he’d need to eat for another week.

And yet there was still something plucking at the back of his mind.

“Rita,” Juno said, tapping his bare heel onto her thigh.

“Shh, Boss, Gwendoline is about to propose to Leslie!”

“No, really, Rita.”

She hummed, half-annoyed, and paused the movie. “Yes, Mista Steel?”

“Two things,” he said. “First, thank you. For… all of this.”

She grinned and replied, “Every lady deserves to be pampered every once in a while.”

“Right,” he said, smiling despite himself. “And second… I don’t want to walk back home, through Hyperion City, in the dark, without my gun.”

Rita laughed at that, patting his leg affectionately. “Same Boss as always,” she said. “I could always make up the couch.”

Affection for Rita bloomed in his chest. “You know what, Rita? Yeah, I’d love that.” Then, with a voice so soft even he barely heard it, he added, “You’re the best.”

“Anytime, Boss.”


End file.
